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Read a New York Times article on Honduras (San Pedro Sula) and how MS 13 and 18th Street pretty much control the country. The president seems to have less power than the gangs there. I was a development work (Peace Corps) in 80s and sad to see this is what has happened. Murders, masses of people wanting to leave for the USA and of course Trump threatening to cut off all assistance unless they cut immigration.

Is there any home for the northern triangle countries? Maybe they were better off as Spanish colonies? Or perhaps they need a massive amount of investment - if not from the US then maybe from China so people at least have jobs and don't see the need to immigrate. Young people with jobs won't join gangs so easily. It also looks as if police and the government in Honduras need to start prosecuting murders - 95% of murders are never solved.

Thoughts? I know Colombia managed to turn things around from 20 years back.

The street gangs don't control Honduras. The cartels along with the right wing polticians and the army. Pretty much the mafia. People look the other way becuase it is a "democracy".

Is there hope for the Northern triangle? I really don't see any. Maybe in El savlador, but Honduras and Guatemala are a lost cause. Hurts me to say it but it's true. The countries are too far to the right. If Venezuela is ****ed becuase of its socialist government, Guatemala and Honduras are the other extreme of the spectrum.

I see Mexico turning things around, but I don’t see the northern triangle of Central America.

For a time they were using the DR to drop their drugs heading for the USA. They were landing their planes even in the highways. The DR got some planes. The army head doesn't say, even today, if they knocked down some of the drug planes, but everyone think they did. The point was that within a year the drug follow mostly went Venezuela-DR-PR/USA to Venezuela-Honduras-Guatemala-Mexico-USA. That was a few years ago and Honduras has not changed a thing.

I don’t know if gangs control Honduras, but they are very strong. Bloodshed in those countries make war-torn-countries seem like child's play. Its kind of funny how the violence drops to normal level at the border with Nicaragua.

Honduras and El Salvador was not ready to receive the hundreds of deportees of California. They simply were handed that problem and the gangs have taken much power since then. MS13 started in Los Angeles, California.

Source is Colombia but transit point is via Venezuela. High military command in Venezuela basically sustain themselves with drug money and with the way the country is at the moment they're not going to let go of that golden egg anytime soon.

However, these drugs were usually arriving from more traditional drug trafficking countries. In March 2018, Colombian authorities seized 481 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a ship at port of Buenaventura.

According to authorities, the drugs were to go from Colombia to Panama and Mexico, before stopping in China, Japan and the South Korean port of Busan.

Authorities in Honduras arrested four Colombian citizens caught in an attempt to smuggle over 100 kilograms of cocaine into the United States through a remote region of the country’s eastern coast, an example of increased drug flow through Honduras

Source is Colombia but transit point is via Venezuela. High military command in Venezuela basically sustain themselves with drug money and with the way the country is at the moment they're not going to let go of that golden egg anytime soon.

Not to mention the gasoline used to turn the coca leaves to paste is probably Venezuelan.

LOL Sure that doesn't mean most cocaine the travels north through central American is coming via Venezuela.

Nowadays it is the lion's share. It switched from the Pacific to Venezuela in the space of 3 years. That's one of the main reasons the homicide rate in Buenaventura went from over 100 to less than 15 per 100.000 in such a short space of time. Tumaco is still hard hit though so the Pacific route is still active just much less so.

Cucuta on the other hand has also seen a huge uptick in homicide. Its now entered in the world's top 50 most violent ranking and looks to be rising.

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